Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Pinsof Interview

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Feb. 6, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

17:02

The Pinsof Interview

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	After GamingGame began, this wonderful image began circulating.
	Kotaku is not biased, with the reference of Kotaku.
	Well, unfortunately, that's simply not the position that Kotaku takes.
	According to Jason Schreier, a writer for Kotaku, nobody at Kotaku has ever claimed or will ever claim to be objective.
	Objectivity is a silly thing to strive for.
	I feel like I'm looking into the mind of a mental patient, someone who seeks to thoroughly discredit themselves or anything they will ever say in the future.
	Holy shit, Jason Schreier, you don't know how dumb that is.
	But I don't know what I was expecting from Jason Schreier, given that he was part of the Game Journal Pros list.
	If you're not quite aware, the Game Journal Pros list was a secret mailing list for progressive game journalists to collude with one another.
	You are right now looking at Kyle Orland talking to Brandon Boyer and espousing the benefits of being a part of the Game Journal Pros list.
	Who are these people?
	Well, Kyle Orland was one of the men with which Zoe Quinn had an affair, a journalist having an affair with a developer, and Brandon Boyer is a 70s throwback who is currently the chairman of the Independent Games Festival.
	Jason, objectivity is a silly thing to strive for.
	Schreier is a senior writer at Kotaku and can be seen on this mailing list defending Nathan Grayson, the journalist who admitted to beginning a sexual relationship with Zoe Quinn just days after he mentioned her in his reporting and linking to her game Depression Quest.
	But that was not by any means the first time that Nathan Grayson promoted Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest game.
	Hell, he's even mentioned in the fucking credits of the game.
	And just to refresh our memories, Nathan Grayson is a writer for Kotaku who says, I played the Wii to 3 and still have some doubts.
	Eh, it was a video game, I flippantly told a friend.
	Well, thanks, Nathan, that's fucking informative.
	I can see that you are the best person for this job.
	There is no other way that you achieved this post other than merit.
	So why is all this relevant?
	Well, recently, a website called TechRaptor conducted an interview with Alastair Pinsov about the state of gaming media.
	So who is Alastair Pinsov?
	Well, he used to write for various publications, most notably independent game site Destructoid as features editor.
	Why doesn't he work there anymore?
	Well, in 2013, Pinsov had written about an Indiegogo campaign that saw the creator, one Chloe Segal, asking for money to have life-saving surgery from shrapnel lodged in the body from a car accident.
	However, that was bullshit.
	Pinsov discovered that the money would be used for sex reassignment surgery.
	Without clear ethical directions from management, Pinsov did the right thing and went public about the Indiegogo campaign because people were going to contribute their hard-earned money to it and they should be fully informed.
	But he was fired because the destructoid management caught ire from certain members of the transgender community and instead of saying, hey, why aren't you concerned that this one woman is lying, they instead fired Pinsov for telling the truth.
	Before we carry on, let's have a quick look at who TagRaptor are, the people who conducted this interview.
	They are a technology and gaming website, and they have a code of ethics.
	A code of ethics in which they state that staff members must disclose publicly conflicts of interest that may affect the objectivity of a preview, review, or editorial content, like they are actual, proper journalists.
	By comparison, this is the closest I can find to an ethics policy from Kotaku, which is not really surprising given how unethical Kotaku has been.
	The only thing that Kotaku's ethics policy, he says in inverted commas, covers is Patreon, and that the editor-in-chief, Stephen Totillo, otherwise known as the man born without a spine, doesn't want his journalists, I say that very much in air quotes as well, he doesn't want them backing other people on Patreon.
	Well, thank God for small mercies, I suppose, but it really doesn't do anything about the other conflicts of interest that are clearly and self-evidently an issue at Kotaku.
	I'm not going to cover everything in the interview, but I will of course provide all of my sources.
	So TechRaptor asks, what do you feel is the biggest issue with the current state of gaming journalism?
	To which Pinsov says, cronyism and questionable collaboration between media, judges, PR and developers.
	To which anyone with even a passing familiarity to the gaming industry is probably well aware of.
	He goes on to say that the general cronyism and boys club mentality of the games press created a culture where the decisions to collectively affect people's lives negatively or positively can easily be made via the Game Journal Pros group, which is what happened to me.
	And it also builds a culture where ethical breaches at companies will be ignored by others in faith others will do the same for them should the time come.
	Again, no great surprises for anyone who's been paying attention.
	So Pinsov goes on to talk about Brandon Boyer.
	He says, he already cut me out, so I'm going to speak honestly about this.
	He's a guy who runs multiple award shows, runs a game site that promotes indies, is friends with devs, PR and all media types, and here he is on the Game Journal Pros group.
	If having a chairman of a judging committee running an indie game site that features exclusives from possible award show applicants doesn't seem like a conflict of interest, it's because you don't have a say over how he runs the IGF or you were a journalist who doesn't want to get on his bad side.
	In 2011 at Fantastic Arcade, I was talking to a former game journalist, Tiff Chow.
	I asked what she thought would win the best game award and she flippantly bragged that her boyfriend is friends with Brandon so he'll win.
	Pinsoff goes on to say, I took it as a bad joke.
	The next day, sure enough, he won best in show for far away against games such as Fez, which won Audience Award, Skulls of the Shogun, Radical Fishing and Octodad.
	Seemed fucked up, but it was such an insignificant show and I depended on Brandon as a local journalist, so I stayed silent.
	Looking back now, it definitely makes me question how the IGF is run.
	Along with all the controversy around IGF judges years back, and recent rumors that have come out about Fez being pushed by investors who shared judging roles, what I witnessed gives these claims some credibility along with how Brandon Boyer treated me personally recently when I've always been a friend and supporter to him.
	I don't think there can be any doubt that there is a great deal of collusion and corruption within the indie game scene.
	It's absolutely incestuous, frankly.
	So what's Jason, objectivity is a silly thing to strive for Shreya's position on this?
	Gamergate's latest conspiracy theory doesn't hold up.
	That is as ridiculous as I would expect in fact.
	I imagine we'll be talking about how Gamergate brought down the Twin Towers because jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough.
	Is that correct, Jason?
	So let's begin with Schreier's admittedly biased account of what's going on.
	He says, despite my distaste for almost everything gamergaters have said and done over the past few months, well, they're probably exposing the corruption and collusion of your buddies on the Game Journal Pros list that you were a part of.
	So before we even begin looking at what you say, we know that you are biased, with a vested interest in making these allegations go away to defend your industry friends.
	So to start with, about Tiff Chow's comment that her boyfriend is friends with Brandon so he'll win, she denied it when asked.
	My goodness, Jason, that completely disproves everything.
	That's concrete, rock-solid fucking facts there, you fucking idiot.
	We are literally at the point where it's he said, she said, and I have no reason to believe you or the people you are asking, but I do have a reason to believe Pinsov because he has acted ethically in the past.
	And you, Jason, objectivity is a silly thing to strive for, member of the Game Journo Pros list, have not.
	Just being on that fucking list is a breach of your journalistic integrity.
	So Jason, objectivity is a silly thing to strive for.
	Schreier reached out to Brandon Boyer to ask for more details about potential wrongdoing there.
	And Boyer didn't want to comment on some of these specific allegations and instead made a statement saying, well, there wasn't any money involved because it was a really low budget thing.
	Well, brilliant.
	I'm more interested in why he doesn't comment on some of the more specific allegations.
	Pinsov alleges broader and more subtle collusion between Boyer and members of the gaming press, which is difficult if not impossible to prove or disprove.
	Boyer was a member of the off-cited Game Journal Pros message board, a list you were also on, and that this group was mostly used as a forum for members of the press to swap 3DS codes and commiserate about industry issues, there's certainly a whiff of appearance of impropriety there.
	I don't think you could try and downplay this anymore if you tried.
	I can't believe you are even trying to defend yourself here.
	If you had any sense, if any of you had any sense, you'd just say, you know what, maybe we made a mistake.
	Let's just have a look at some of the things that came off of the Game Journal Pros list, shall we?
	Who here hasn't slept with a PR person or a game developer?
	Hashtag am I right?
	William O'Neill, editor-in-chief of Tech Radar.
	I like the signed letter of support idea.
	Even better if we can get some developers in on that.
	Anyone want to volunteer to draft something?
	Kyle Orland from Ars Technica.
	There is even you once again trying to downplay this issue.
	As sympathetic as I am to the horrible harassment Zoe has faced, I think this incident has raised enough questions about the incestuous relationship between the press and developers already.
	And what a surprise, Kyle Orland, silver lining.
	Quinn is getting a bunch of new Patreon patrons today, apparently.
	Oh, that's lucky.
	I guess he's trying to butter her up so we can fuck her again.
	Because we've already established that the media, fucking their subjects, is just fine in the gaming industry.
	No wonder you guys are so focused on trying to get women into tech.
	But at least someone is just someone has some shred of decency.
	Mike Flutter says, I would prefer not to be associated with this.
	It feels wrong to me.
	I think it feels very off to reach across the fronts from journalist to subject in this way.
	I prefer professional distance, especially given the accusations being levied at us from the outside.
	So when you, Jason, objectivity is a silly thing to strive for, Schreier, say, there is certainly a whiff of appearance of impropriety around the Game Journo Pros list, I have to fucking agree with you.
	There is certainly a tiny, slight whiff of an appearance of impropriety.
	So the second major allegation in Pinsov's interview is that Phil Fish significantly stole from their code, projects and ideas to create Fez.
	Your rebuttal, Jason, was to confirm that in fact Phil did steal it.
	Shreier asked McGrath and sent him a video of this early prototype that they worked on together.
	That's the state of it I think when Phil was still working on it.
	So it was really early when he was working on it.
	It's not like he stole a complete game or something.
	Which is fair enough.
	Phil didn't steal a complete game or something.
	But and he does think that people are overreacting, but he's not cool with what happened.
	But let's be realistic about it.
	And I agree.
	We should be realistic about it.
	I don't think that there is necessarily a legal case to be made against Phil Fish here.
	It's just kind of a dickish thing to do.
	But Pinsov didn't say that he stole an entire game.
	He says he stole from their code, projects and ideas.
	The main concept behind fares being the dimension swapping concept that McGrath does believe Fish stole.
	So all you are doing here, Jason, objectivity is a silly thing to strive for, Shreya, is confirming what Pinsov is saying.
	But you do make an attempt to strawman his argument by saying he disagrees with Pinsov's assertion that Fish took all the credit.
	Well, where did Pinsov assert that?
	You haven't shown us that.
	You have shown that Pinsov said he stole from some of his ideas, code and concept that McGrath agrees with.
	In response to Shreya's ridiculous propagandistic piece, Pinsov wrote a long twit longer addressing the issues in detail.
	And notes that Pinsov did actually make corrections and retractions where he was mistaken.
	I haven't included them here because frankly they're not relevant to this video because they were wrong.
	But if you'd like to read them, again, the link is in the description.
	At the end of this twit longer, he says this.
	Shreya has his own vendetta against me.
	As do anyone on the Game Journal Pros list who I've called out by name or in general in recent months.
	He was pretty clear about this in a lengthy, private conversation the other night.
	Nothing hostile, just him lecturing me on going public with these interviews and not getting both sides of a story.
	The irony.
	Because you know he totally did that with every Game Agate story or when my employer came to him via Game Journal Pros with some bullshit stories and shut me out when I asked if he would give me a minute to hear my side.
	So to sum this up, the Pinsov interview didn't tell us anything we didn't already know.
	Pinsov was an insider who can confirm for us that they are indeed corrupt, they collude, and they will bully people out of their club if they go against the prevailing group think.
	I'm really having a hard time believing anything that anyone at Kotaku writes.
	They simply are not a credible source on anything.
	And they seem to be the ones admitting that.
	They seem to be bellowing it from the rooftops and beating their chests about how little they can be trusted as sources reporting on anything.
	It's baffling.
	It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen in my life from people who would purport to be journalists and to inform their audience.
	I'm going to leave you with a clip from Stephen Totillo's interview with Total Biscuit.
	Stephen explains exactly the purpose of Gorka Media and the sites owned by them.
	He explains exactly that Gorka Media goes out of its way not to be objective, to infuse their reporting with subjectivity, to muddy the waters and give their personal feelings on the issue.
	They are simply gaming's own tabloid.
	Let's step back actually and talk about something I think is important for people to understand.
	So there is an ethos at Gawker Media.
	I know that, you know, Gawker Media certainly has a reputation for being an aggressive media outlet, right?
	There is a perhaps apocryphal story that our publisher Nick Denton says that I relate a fair amount of times.
	I apologize if you've heard this one before, but I can keep this short, believe it or not.
	He was a reporter at the Financial Times.
	He would notice that reporters would file stories for the newspaper, then they get a drink at the bar.
	They talk about the story they just filed.
	And the way they would describe it over a beer at the bar with a friend was wildly different than how they described it in the newspaper.
	They said what they really thought.
	They dispensed with any of the politeness that had to go into the newspaper.
	They dispensed with the feeling of I have to balance each side equally in order to give each other.
	Sometimes that would have been the appropriate approach, but they talked about how they really felt.
	And Nick felt that's the truth.
	That's the truth that the readers deserve to know.
	This shouldn't be a truth that's conserved just for the people having a beer at the pub.
	This is the truth, the essence of this story.
	This is what people should know.
	It's a populist view of journalism.
	And it is the approach that he wanted to take with Gawker Media.
	A noble should approach, a we will tell you how we feel as we report the news.
	And that leads to sometimes something that'll make people uncomfortable, which is a blending of subjectivity and objectivity.
	I think that good writers, good writers of Gawker Media, make it clear where the opinion part of things is coming in.
	But this is what guides us.
	And this is why we'll continue to err on the side of not playing it safe, err on the side of overexpressing what the readers, what the writers rather, are talking about, what the buzz is amongst our internal chat room of what we think, what we really think of this company or this developer or this whatever is going on.

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